


Being Mortal

by Morgondagar



Category: Uta no Prince-sama
Genre: Hospitals, Near Death Experiences, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-07
Packaged: 2019-10-23 11:42:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17682776
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgondagar/pseuds/Morgondagar
Summary: Death is the end of it all. It cuts your story short and leaves the rest of the world feeling lonely. Some fear the inevitable, while some find it comforting. That’s how they met, the two who came to help each other with how to be mortal





	Being Mortal

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is my contribution to the Utapri Winter Flashbang! I was fortunate enough to be working with Clover, who's fanart is featured below! You can find more of her pieces at @EchoingYoukai on Twitter and @kasodaniis on tumblr!  
> You can see the art in all of it's glory [HERE](http://kasodaniis.tumblr.com/post/182627942444/being-mortal-by-morgondagar-read-it-here) and [HERE](https://twitter.com/EchoingYoukai/status/1093452731354759168)

 

Pain. Syo hated waking up in pain. People ran in and out of his room, checking in on the boy and his monitor. No one asked him how he felt, they didn’t have the time. Keeping such an unstable heart beating was enough work for the doctors. Being only nine, it frustrated Syo immensely that no one would listen to his cries or wails. But he knew why. He had overheard them, the doctors whispering behind the drapes of his bed, under the impression of the boy sleeping. He had heard his mother’s cries, almost been able to see the tears running down her cheeks. He had heard his father trying to comfort her while choking back his own tears. But it was okay and Syo had come to accept it. No one with the same heart condition had survived past age 12, so why would he.

And that’s how Ren came to snap at the boy.

Snow was falling outside like tears from heaven, like tears from a little boy’s eyes. Ren left the door halfway closed before walking down the corridor, cursing in a hushed voice over how he could cry in front of his mother. He loved her more than anything else, and yet she was falling away from him like sand through fingers, filling up the hourglass of mortality. He wandered the corridors and staircases, tried to find any sort of comfort in this place. That’s how the boy who feared mortality more than anyone else bumped into the boy who had accepted it as his fate.

Needless to say, the boys did not get along. It started out well enough; Ren apologising for not looking before taking the corner, Syo asking about the tears down the other’s cheeks. Their ideologies on life clashed and them parting ways would have been the end of it, until they bumped into each other again.

Syo was now 15. He had survived his relapse, he had survived past age twelve and now he was doing all he could to keep surviving. It was hard to tell when the shift came, but his acceptance of death had turned into a great fear, something keeping him up at night or sweating in panicked bursts. Syo worked out, ate the most refined meals available, took his medications properly and did everything his doctors had ever told him. He couldn’t end up in the hospital again, he couldn’t die. He would become an idol, play his violin and sing for millions of people. He got into Saotome Academy.

So did Ren. His mother never recovered, leaving him spiralling into sadness while crumbling under the pressure of his father’s expectations. The years up until he turned 18 had left him cynical, no longer scared of his own or anyone else’s mortality. Sometimes he longed for it. As he played his mother’s recordings over and over, he felt less and less. She wouldn’t come back to help him, tell his father off or encourage the future that was ahead of his son. Neither would Ren. To no one’s surprise, he got sent to become the poster boy of the company, earning himself some sort of reputation as an idol from a school of prestige while being a performing advertisement.

Neither of the boys had realised who was sitting in their very own classroom until Ren was reaching out to help Syo up on his feet again. After the initial shock of remembering the other they laughed off the situation awkwardly. They parted ways without bringing up their old tale, which perhaps was for the best.

See, the two of them came to dislike the other one. Ren always teasing Syo for his height, or lack thereof, and Syo being way too passionate about everything he did.

_“He is annoying.”_

Simple as that. They didn’t hate each other, they just couldn’t stand being in the same room for too long.

One day as Ren was having some time to himself, which was rare considering the popularity his looks and charm had yielded him, he came to observe Syo in the yard. He was practicing some sort of kick in the air and was not nailing it, not that Ren knew much about martial arts anyway. Watching the boy fail over and over left Ren frustrated. It wasn’t working out, why wouldn’t he accept that? He said it out loud after approaching the boy, no longer able to take it but needing answers.

“When did you start giving up?” Syo had spat out after some bickering. He hadn’t forgotten about the day in the hospital where Ren had snapped at him for accepting his fate. Ren hadn’t either.

“When did you come to care?”

Ren hadn’t been yelling, but to himself it felt like it. He was already tired, had put too much emotions into this endeavour. The two of them had obviously adopted the other one’s mindset over the years, but somehow were unable to see the respective arguments. Syo had stopped giving up, Ren had done so long ago.

What had started as an argument escalated into a need to prove the other one wrong. It was destructive on both parts. Syo did everything he could to prove himself as healthy as possible, working out more often, spent his free time messing about with his friends and following his dream obsessively of becoming an immortalised idol. Ren on the other hand neglected his needs and rarely left the room. The one time he chose to, he had ended up in the least sought after situation he could think of, finding his classmate sobbing in the middle of a corridor, grabbing at his chest.

Ren could Immediately tell that whatever was going on. It had been long since he had one himself, but Ren knew a panic attack when he saw one. He knew about the condition Syo had and after making sure it was beating and doing so evenly, it was time to calm him down enough to get him to the infirmary. It had never occurred to him to which extent Syo had been afraid of death, the event awakening something old within his cynical brain.

Syo had almost completely calmed down by the time Ren helped him into the bed while the nurse was running around with all sorts of equipment. The younger boy had tried to calm her down, explaining that it must have been a false alarm considering that he was, you know, living and breathing this exact moment rather than having a heart attack. The humorous approach left Ren snorting to himself while sitting down on the bed to Syo’s left.

After running several tests on the boy, the nurse left the room to call various doctors, leaving Ren to look after his classmate in silence. Or, it would have been in silence if Syo ever shut up.

“Thank you”

Admittedly, Ren could think of way worse things that he could have said, but it didn’t make Ren more keen to converse. He was drained. Shrugging off the gratitude, Ren explained that he had no reason to thank him, considering he couldn’t just leave him to die of potential heart failure in the middle of a corridor.

“You know what I meant…” Syo argued. And, yes, Ren knew that he was talking about the breakdown and how he had done all he could to convince him that he was in fact not dying. But to that he once again shrugged.

“I hate to admit it, but we are quite alike, you and I” Ren sighed. With a nod, Syo agreed to the statement. Beyond his careless attitude, Ren’s past was poking through again. The same way Ren had feared death itself, Syo had come to feel the same. Syo was thinking the same, but painfully reminded by how little he used to care about himself and how well it reflected on his classmate right now.

They ended up talking to each other for a long while, admitting things they never thought they would do and interacting almost as if they were friends. They apologised, explained and put their own perspective forward, getting to know each other. Ren left the infirmary a while later and the two of them thanked the other one simultaneously.

Of course, the whole ordeal didn’t fix everything. Syo was still scared and Ren could still catch himself having no interest in continuing, what changed was how they handled it. They came to seek the other one up, not necessarily to vent, sometimes just to sit in silence with someone who understood. It took years, the boys ending up in a band, touring and winning several prizes for Syo to unlearn his fear, Ren helping him along the way to come to terms with the inevitable. Ren came to care more for himself, Syo reminding him of what was worth living for. It was a bond they shared, sometimes questioned by the other bandmates and friends around them. What started as a juvenile disagreement had helped the two of them cope with how to be mortal.


End file.
